Unless you’ve been abducted by aliens and living on the Planet Zog for the last 60 years, you know very well that smoking is bad for your health. Even if you escaped alien abduction, if you can read, write and hear - or even if you have any one of those senses - you know that smoking is bad for your health. And so does everyone else, because it’s out there every day in some form or other.

That doesn’t make it okay to act as an anti-smoking evangelist and lecture people about their health, though. People who smoke are mostly informed, consenting adults. They smoke because they choose to, or they smoke because they are addicted to nicotine. Either way, it’s their business and nobody else’s.

The smoker’s own nearest and dearest do not even have the right to lecture them about the health consequences of smoking. The only people who are justified in lecturing smokers about their health are medical professionals, and even then, only under certain circumstances.

If a smoker goes to a doctor with serious breathing problems which are impacting on his health, the doctor would be breaching his duty of care if he did not point out the dangers of continuing to smoke. However, if the same smoker is otherwise healthy and visits the nurse to get an ingrown toenail sorted out, he should not be subjected to a lecture on the evils of nicotine.

Should a smoker light up in a designated non smoking area, or in your house without asking your permission, it’s fine to object to them smoking in your presence. In fact, it’s extremely rude of the smoker to behave like this, and they are demonstrating a degree of discourtesy in lighting up indiscriminately. However, any remarks should be confined to the fact that they are smoking in a non smoking area, or without your permission in your own space. This is relevant - the impact of smoking on their health is not.

In the same way, it is rude for non-smokers to lecture smokers about their lifestyle choices. If they are smoking where it’s legal to smoke - and there are less and less of these places now, wherever you happen to live - they have every right to do so. If you object, you should be the one to move away from the situation. They choose to smoke, and you can choose not to be around them while they are smoking.

When a smoker is on his home territory, he is perfectly entitled to smoke where he wants to, as long as his family are in agreement. Again, if you don’t like it, that’s tough on you, but it’s no reason to launch into a diatribe on the evils of smoking. Many smokers respect the feelings of others and will not smoke around non-smokers or children. As has been noted, they know the health dangers, both to themselves and others.

In summary, if a smoker chooses to smoke despite the health risks, it is wrong for anyone else to interfere with that choice, however well-intentioned their motivation. Most people have at least one unhealthy habit, so before you lecture a smoker about smoking, think how you would feel if somebody tried to stop you having a dessert in a restaurant because you were overweight, or if you went to get another drink at a party and someone advised you to think of your liver instead of having another glass of wine. 

You wouldn’t like it, and you’d think - quite rightly - that that person was being very rude. It’s the same principle when it comes to smoking. Just because someone thinks they know best, it doesn’t give them the automatic right to interfere in someone else’s life.